Chapter 10: Chapter 6

Rolling over to the crib frame, Bill pulled himself up. It had been a long time since he had seen the old man with golden examination gloves.

He still slept a ton, but not as much as before. Over the course of time the main gain he had was that he was starting to hear ‘words’ instead of just intelligible sounds.

Not long after the incident with the old man, Bill was moved to a nursery for most of the day. Although he still slept in the same room as his mother he was no longer made to stay in the crib.

His nurse was still the same middle-aged lady. If it wasn’t for the bottle, he would have assumed she was a professional wetnurse, after all, he had seen her every day since being born. It was also thanks to her that Bill could now somewhat understand the meaning of various words as she would almost constantly speak to either him or the other babies in the nursery.

Bill: ‘Well, she should be getting killer overtime pay haha”

Telling himself the same joke for the five hundredth time made him unconsciously smile. All in all, the days hadn’t been as bad as he thought they would be.

As for exactly how long it had been, he wasn’t sure. At first, he had been keeping track of the days, but after a few weeks it no longer seemed relevant. He was a healthy growing baby; his mother’s condition had also seemed to get better after the old man had come. She still didn’t speak, or make hardly any facial movements, but now he had seen the nurse help her to her feet several times and slowly walk with her around the room.

Each time Bill saw this there was one overriding thought in his mind: “She’s so tall…”

Without any direct measurements he had to make assumptions. First assumption, he was not a pygmy child, he was regular sized. If that first assumption was true, then his nurse would be in the height range of five and a half feet tall, which would mean his mother had to be at least eight foot tall. Minimum.

This was borderline inhumanly tall. To put it in perspective, his mother was tall enough to look down while talking to Shaq or Yao. A normal six-foot tall man standing beside her would look like a child accompanied by the parent.

Stranger still, his nurse was able to help the giant woman to her feet and was apparently comfortable enough with her strength to keep her walking without the fear of what would happen if such a large person fell.

If there were a second thought in Bills head as he seen his mother stand and walk it was that she was so well proportioned. When he had seen her on the bed, he could tell that her head and hands looked normal enough. This was a good sign since typically people who are extra tall suffer from bone afflictions.

Odd-shaped hands and heads are the most normal, but they will also tend to walk bent over due to the immense weight put on their frames.

‘She walks completely normal though…’

And this was the crux of it. His mother had been lying in bed for at least a month, an amount of time that would make even a fit person’s muscles atrophy, but when she got up, she looked like a normal pretty lady - well - one who had been stretched in such a way the Bill couldn’t quite get over.

He had lived for many years, he had seen and heard of many things, and while this didn’t take the cake over him being reborn, it was right up there on his list of oddities.

‘Well, it’s good she can be healthy’.

Bill thought this before taking a few steps over, aided by the railing of his crib, and sitting back down as his leg muscles started to get tired.

Thinking all of this through he came to his next thought. One that had bothered him since before he stopped counting the days.

‘Where the hell is my father?’

Bill had been born in a time where there was a societal expectation that the business of making children should only happen after marriage and if a child was conceived before marriage, then the wedding bells should be ringing before the child was born.

Times had changed in some ways, but it was something Bill still believed in his heart, especially as contraceptives became better and more widespread.

‘You only have a child if you want to have a child’ was his mindset, and if a man was man enough to get a woman pregnant, he should at least be man enough to take responsibility.

The only thing currently keeping him from cursing his father as a coward who run and hid was the condition his mother was in. While she didn’t look hurt outwardly, there was something wrong. Bill didn’t know if there had been an accident, and because he couldn’t ascertain that information, he had no choice but to without judgement.

Pulling himself back to his feet Bill thought: ‘So he better be dead, or next-*BBOOOOOOOM*

Falling back on his butt Bill could only wonder what on Earth could have happened, it sounded like a gas line exploded and shock-wave was enough to knock him off balance.

After quickly gathering himself, Bill heard – or rather felt –

*thump*

*thump*

*thump*

Whatever it was, he could somehow feel it getting closer. Seconds seemed to slow down, and Bill thought what he should do.

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‘Should I scream again…?’

This was something that had helped during the episode with the old man. After he screamed the nurse had come in not even a minute after.

*thump*

*thump*

‘No, everyone should be able to hear this’

And so, as the sound got closer, Bill resigned himself to doing what any baby could do. He just waited and watched.

*thump*

…

*thump*

The sound got closer, and the thumps came more spread out. Until Bill was sure that he heard the last one just at his door. He was not ashamed to admit, he was scared of whatever it was on the other side.

Pulling himself back to his feet so he could see better, Bill position himself to look at the door, looking over at his mother, he realized she was also looking towards the door.

Focusing back on the door, he was about to scream for help until-*Click*

With a click, the door simply opened, and just like that in walked a monster of a man. The man in question wore a worn-out, ripped green suit, and had two swords hanging from his waist. With his short jet-black hair almost touching the rooms ceiling, Bill reflexively fell backwards.

This man was much larger than his mother. Going by the height of the ceiling, he was at least a foot taller. More than that, his frame was massive. Though the massive man had only taken a single step into the room, it felt like he took up half of the space in it.

This all had happened too fast, too unexpected. Bill didn’t notice that the man’s eyes didn’t move from the woman on the bed, he didn’t notice that no one come to see the commotion, he didn’t notice the man’s eyes.

All Bill saw was a giant. A man so tall that he could hardly make out his face. A man who looked as if to not be real, and certainly not safe to be around whatever the case.

At first, he had felt too scared to breath, then as the man took a step, he got angry. Angry that no one had come, he was a baby, his mother was sick, and the nurse was a small woman. Someone should have come faster, even if this man was a monster how dare they leave behind the helpless?

These emotions swirled in him faster than he could consciously process.

Then on the man’s third step into the room, Bill did the only thing he could do.

Taking a deep breath, Bill bravely let out the loudest scream he could muster-

*!WWWWAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!*

With this decisive decision made there was no turning back. Whatever the outcome would be, Bill couldn’t do anything else.

The reaction he got in response to his brave misunderstanding would never leave him.

After the cry, the large man jerked his head around. Seeing this Bill felt like he was stripped naked, not to be outdone the baby lifted himself back to his feet and tried to not look like he had just peed himself a little.

As he stood up his eyes never left the man’s body, although at his vantage he couldn’t see it clearly, Bill thought he saw the big man begin to smile.

With five large strides the man was at Bills crib, and before Bill could even try and look directly up, he was scooped from the bed with a single hand. A hand large enough to carry his whole body with ease.

Unable to control himself further as the man brought Bill up to his face, the man who had lived past ninety years on earth, who had been reborn and who had become his own psychiatrist in order to stay sane, had directly pooped his pants and passed out.

His last thought, as the world started to turn black, was.

‘This cannot be happening’.